“Look-A-Like” is a new column which is meant as a lighthearted account of all those “I feel like I’ve seen this before…” moments. Today I had just such a feeling when I saw the first interior shot of the upcoming Jaguar XF. There was just something about those central air vents and their relationship to the infotainment system that felt familiar.

The new Jeep Cherokee has gotten a lot of flack for its challenging looks, but it’s one of those cars the Brits call a “Marmite car” (Marmite being the yeast spread you put on your toast) – you either love it or hate it. In fact, most of the motoring press seems to hate the split front headlights and chamfered take on the traditional Jeep grille, while at the same time claiming the rest of the car is bland.

Personally, I disagree – I really like the looks of the Cherokee, especially the Trailhawk off-road version:

If you already find modern F1 races sleep inducingly dull, imagine what a race between autonomous cars would look like…. The concept of a driverless racing car doesn’t seem to make sense at first, but the reasoning behind the ED Design Torq is almost as simple as it is laughable. Michael Robinson, Design director and CEO of ED Design, has noticed that new technology in production vehicles is usually first developed and tested in racing cars on a circuit before hitting the streets in the cars you and me can buy. He also noticed increasing investments in autonomous driving by almost any major car manufacturer. He then combined these two ideas to conclude the world desperately needs a driverless racing car to test the technology before self-driving cars can hit our streets. He jumped into this supposed opportunity and created the Torq, a racing car without windows and without a steering wheel.

Thankfully, ED Design isn’t yet planning to start a racing series with autonomous cars anytime soon, but instead will build a handful of Torq driverless cars in the next 24 hours and rent them out to major automakers, IT companies and government lawmakers as “Mobile Autonomous Automobile Laboratory” for them to experiment with driverless cars and to turn it into an “open-source” technology. The press release states “MAAL asks researchers around the world to join this noble endeavor in the automotive industry to stop killing millions of people.” [Read more…]

#5 (joint): Nissan Sway

Why is it here? Because it promises a genuinely dynamic-looking Nissan Micra to rival the Fiesta and Mazda2, because even when diluted for production it should still look better than most other cars in the class, and because it should help us forget the awful current-generation Micra. [Read more…]

For many successful manufacturers it’s easy to point to their breakout car – Ford has its Model T, VW has the Beatle and Golf, Toyota the Corolla. What about Hyundai, currently the world’s 4th largest automaker (along with Kia)? There are a few candidates: there is the 2nd gen Santa Fe, as well as the 6th gen Sonata, but for me it’s the current (5th gen) Elantra that really stands out. While the previous generations of the other two cars were still pretty good, the current Elantra was a giant leap over its dowdy predecessor. With a giant injection of style the car went from an also-ran to close to the top of the US compact class, jumping over cars such as the Corolla and Civic in tests if not quite in sales. Still, as the chart below shows the sales of the 5th gen grew quickly and peaked at double that for the 4th gen model. [Read more…]

#5 Lamborghini Aventador LP750-4 SV

This is the essence of Lamborghini and how the Aventador should’ve been from the beginning, especially from the rear. I know the brand needs to compromise and become less extreme in order to sell cars and survive, but come on Lambo, let Ferrari make the polished, clean-looking Italian supercars and keep making things that look like they come from out of space and could eat you alive. The Super Veloce adds 50 hp to the standard Aventador to make it 750 hp, but top speed remains 350 km/h and the 0-100 sprint is just 0,1 second faster at 2,8 s, so the performance alone doesn’t justify the extra Audi TT this thing will probably cost compared to the regular Aventador (official pricing hasn’t yet been released), but damn, those looks certainly do. [Read more…]

#5: Renault Kadjar

Why is it here? Because it’s based on successful Nissan X-Trail/Rouge, because it manages to look even better than the already-handsome donor car, and because it should help us forget the sad joke that was the Renault Koleos (European sales in 2014: fewer than 7,500)

When I arrived at the Geneva Auto Show on Wednesday morning, I noticed a Ford billboard on the outside walls of the Palexpo exposition hall that displayed the new Ford GT with just one word: LaFord. It took me a few seconds to make the connection between this billboard and the Ferrari LaFerrari, but when it struck me, I just smiled and thought: nicely done, Ford.

I didn’t pay any attention to it the next day, until a few other journalists told me they had noticed the poster had been changed overnight, and it no longer had the reference to Ferrari. This left us wondering: why did they change the billboard? Was it only there for one day, just for the journalists on the press days? Because the Geneva Auto Show wouldn’t open for the public until Thursday. Or did Ferrari complain? That would be strange, because there are many examples of car ads taking a friendly stab at the competition, and most of the times, the targeted company responds in a similar matter, resulting in a funny game of advertising “battles” that benefits both companies as it gets attention on the internet, in the same way this ad has done for Ford (but not for Ferrari).

The most well-known battles are those between Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar, and between BMW and Audi, but perhaps supercar maker Ferrari doesn’t want to be compared to an “ordinary” Ford. [Read more…]

Just the other day I caught myself trying to remember what the current Renault Laguna looked like, and I couldn’t. At some point I even started asking myself if there ever had been a 3rd generation Laguna! Don’t think of me as a badge snob, as I was really fond of the 2nd gen Laguna (both the liftback and the estate), it’s just that the 3rd gen is anything but memorable. And the European sales confirm this: it barely sold more than 16,000 units in 2014, and was outsold twofold by the Citroen C5/DS5 duo, almost threefold by the Peugeot 508, and almost tenfold by the VW Passat. Renault better pull out all stops if the 4th gen wants to enjoy even a fraction of the success the first two generations enjoyed in their heyday!

What struck me while walking around on the Geneva Auto Show floor, was that a number of brands decided not only to display their newest models, but also one (or in one case: a few) vintage car to remind the visitors of their heritage.

Ford was the most notable of all, showing a GT40 next to the strikingly good looking 2015 GT, which showed how small the original GT40 was, or how big cars have grown since. Ford also had a Sierra XR4, a classic Mustang Fastback next to the all-new Mustang, which will finally be officially sold in Europe as well, and an Escort Mexico to show the historical roots of the growling Focus RS.

With the P1 GTR, 650S Le Mans and the 675LT all debuting in Geneva, you’d think McLaren has more than enough new cars to fill up their entire stand, but they still found some space to add a 1997 McLaren F1 GT Longtail as well, to celebrate the arrival of the 675LT, where LT is short for Long Tail. That Longtail is one of the rarest and therefore most valuable McLarens ever and makes a visit to the McLaren stand worth your while. [Read more…]